Samurai: A Concise History

129 Pages·2019·10.585 MB·English

by  Michael Wert

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SAMURAI
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SAMURAI
A Concise History
Michael Wert
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ISBN 978– 0– 19– 093294– 7
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
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To my wife, Yuko Kojima Wert
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CONTENTS
Introduction | 1
1. Becoming Those Who Served | 4
2. Early Warrior Authority | 12
3. War and Culture | 33
4. Warriors in an Age of Peace | 64
5. Inventing the Samurai | 84
NOTES | 111
FURTHER READING | 113
INDEX | 117
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 Introduction
In the climactic battle scene at the end of the movie The Last
Samurai (2003), the protagonist, a samurai rebel, leads his army of
warriors as they charge to certain death against the newly formed,
modern government army. Wearing only their traditional clothing
and armed with bows, swords, and spears, they are mowed down by
Gatling guns and howitzers as the government’s general, himself an
ex- samurai, looks on anxiously. This scene has all the familiar tropes
in the global fantasy about samurai: tradition versus modernity,
hand- to- hand fighting versus guns, and a celebration of honorable
death. The event depicted in the film is a historical one, the War of
the Southwest in Japan in 1877, when ex- samurai refused to follow
a series of laws that stripped all samurai of their privileged status
and accompanying symbols; no more wearing swords in public or
maintaining topknot hairstyles. A more accurate description of the
battle scene flips the cinematic one— the modernized government
army took shelter in a castle, the most traditional of defenses, while
ex- samurai rebels bombarded them with cannon from outside. As
with anything else, the historical depiction is more interesting than
the popularized one.
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